Crash
by Inconcessus
Summary: There is a one in a million chance of dying in a plane crash. You literally have more chance of being killed by food poisoning. Bella's plane crashed in the mountains, and from what she can tell - she is the only survivor. The radio doesn't work, apparently the pilots were too low budget for a black box, and she's pretty sure her arm is going to fall off. But she has to survive.
1. Prologue

'The odds of dying in a plane crash are 11 million to 1'. That's what mom had said when she saw me onto the tiny plane that would take me across the Washington Cascades to dad's village in Canada. 11 million to 1. There was literally more chance of dying from _food poisoning _than from a plane crash. 'But mom', I said. What about this tiny-ass plane that looks like it's been strapped together with duct tape? Surely there's more chance of going down in this midget of an aircraft? Apparently not. More people are killed by _ladders _each year than in a plane. There's probably more chance of me being killed by a _goat _than in this plane. So when I strapped myself in and kicked my bag under my seat, I waved goodbye with a smile and prepared myself to traverse the air with the 3 other people that were making the journey to Salmo with. Those two people being the Pilot and Co-Pilot, along with the scrawny redhead across the cabin from me. If we went down, at least only 4 people would die. It wouldn't be a big deal.

So as the rickety little plane ascended, I kept reminding myself that it was so _unlikely_ that anything would happen. I made this trip every year, and nothing had ever gone wrong. Ever. Not once. It would be fine.

"You okay back there, Bella?" Bud called from the cockpit. I grunted an affirmative response and settled in for the flight. There was _literally _more chance of me dying from getting struck by lightning than by dying today.

So if it was so unlikely, then why were we, 2 hours later, hurtling towards the Washington Cascades at an extremely high speed, while Chad screamed into his radio and Bud attempted to regain control? So unlikely. The weirdest thing? It was so quiet. There was metal shrieking while the cabin disintegrated, but it all went silent. And when we hit the side of the mountain, my seatbelt popped. So weird. I remember thinking to myself, 'That wasn't so bad, right? Wow'. Easy landing. Nothing. But then there was a _jerk, _and the cabin sheared in two. The kid across from me was launched through the gap in a second and luckily for him, probably died instantly. The sound came back in a rush, the metallic sound of the ripping metal and the soft _whoosh_ as the open tube of the fuselage lit like a flame thrower. I heard awful screams from the cockpit and that's when I was thrown from my seat. Probably because of the seatbelt popping when we hit. Otherwise I would have burnt with them. But I was free, weightless. I glided out of the gap between the two parts of the cabin and slipped past the torn metal, grazing my arm. I was weightless – flying. And when I hit the ground a few seconds later, it didn't even hurt.


	2. Chapter 1

**Story Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight. The plot and characters of this story are mine and mine alone.**

The first thing you notice when you wake up from being knocked out is the disorientation. It looks so painless and simple in the movies, right? Knock a bad guy on the head; he'll wake up two hours later looking none the worse for wear. That's not right. My head was pounding and there was the taste of blood in my mouth. I had bitten down on my tongue and my neck felt like it was one crack away from just breaking off of my spine. It hurt. I was dizzy, confused and sluggish. It was so hot, too. Waves of burning air were pushing against my face and drying out my eyes and mouth. I tried to lick my lips to wet them a little but it hurt too much. I could barely keep my eyes open. I tried to push myself up but my arm hurt more than when I broke it in 5th grade. My ears were ringing. Like a high-pitched _eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee_ that wouldn't go away. I was tired. So I went back to sleep.

* * *

God knows how long later, I actually woke up properly. My ears were still whining, so I couldn't hear anything but that. It wasn't so hot anymore, and my tongue had stopped bleeding. I tried again to get up, but my arm wouldn't let me. Turns out what I thought had been a light _graze_ as I came free from the plane was a little bit worse than that. There was a huge, deep nasty gash in my arm. I was pretty sure I could see bone. It was disgusting, and it hurt like a bitch. I really didn't like it. It was probably going to get infected.

I took stock of the situation. I was on the ground, covered in blood and the plane was smouldering nearby. Bud and Chad were nowhere to be seen. There were scraps of metal all over the place, trees had been shredded into little wooden shrapnel and covered the side of the mountain like sawdust. That was another thing. The side of the mountain. The huge mountain in the middle of nowhere, that even though we were pretty high up there was nothing but mountain and forest. No towns, no roads, no lakes. Zilch. Judging by how long we'd been up before crashing, we were probably in the Cascades. Washington or Canada side – I didn't know. Knowing my luck – seriously 11 million to 1 – we were probably right in the fucking middle. Awesome.

Using my other arm to gain some leverage, I pushed myself onto my feet. My shins were killing me, and I was pretty sure my ankle was sprained, but I started moving towards the crash site. The flames had died down some while I'd been passed out, and I could get pretty close. I circled around, trying to find a point where I could see into the cockpit, but there was nothing. It was a huge crumpled ball of metal, and everything was still too hot to climb in through the cabin.

"Chad?" I called out weakly, my voice wavering, "Bud?"

Nothing. No answer. My arm was bleeding a lot.

"Guys?" I tried again. Tears stung my dried out eyes. They weren't answering. Maybe they had passed out like me? I changed my tactics to figuring out what to do. The metal was still too hot, and way too dangerous to make an attempt at getting in the plane to use the radio yet. My best bet was waiting for either Bud or Chad to wake up, or for someone to come and get us. Bud had been radioing _someone _when we hit, so they had to come eventually, right?

First thing on the agenda was controlling the massive cut on my arm before I died of blood loss. You were meant to put pressure on it, right? To stop the bleeding. I took off my sweater gingerly, taking care not to rub it along my arm and make it worse. Turning it inside out so none of the gross or sharp stuff on the outside of the sweater could get into the cut, I bunched up the torso area and took a deep breath before pressing it down hard on my arm. Shit. My vision blurred and I wobbled on my already not-too-steady feet.

Removing my makeshift gauze momentarily, I sat myself against the remaining half of a tree, and braced my body against it. Take two. I pressed the sweater down again, ignoring the wooziness and breathing through the agony. Once the pressure alleviated a bit of the pain, I was able to tie the arms of the sweater tight around my wrist and forearm to keep it there. Leaning back heavily on the tree, I took a breather. That hurt. A lot. I cradled my arm against my chest and brought up my knees to push it against me, putting more pressure on the wound. Relaxing a little, there wasn't much else to do beside wait for help.

The day was well on its way to being over when the fire stopped. And it was long past sunset when the metal was only warm to the touch, rather than blistering my fingers on contact like it had done earlier. The sweater was still strapped to my arm, but the blood had soaked through already and I was too scared to look to see if my arm was okay, so I just left it there for now. There would be a first aid kit in the plane. I started by kicking the sharps bit of metal aside with my good foot – unsurprisingly my ankle was 100% sprained – and tried to clear a path into the side of the cabin that was more accessible. The cockpit hadn't quite detached itself from this side, so it was my best bet. Once it was relatively safe to attempt to enter, I tried to climb the side of the plane to drop into the cabin – which, with my cut up arm was apparently not happening.

There was a small slit in the back though, just big enough for me to squeeze through the splintered metal. It was like a canyon – the two sides of the cabin had spilt right up the middle and had tipped over to lean against each other, leaving just a gap on the ground where my feet could touch the ground. It made a makeshift shelter – like a triangle, the two halves joining at the top and blocking out the air. The cockpit wasn't looking good. The door was intact, but all of the metal around it had basically twisted in on itself, and looking at it from here there was no way the pilots had survived. I moved slowly towards it, noting that my bag was mostly intact from where I had stuffed it beneath my seat. It smelt like fire and blood in here. I was starting to cry. I kicked my way through the debris to the cockpit, moving to open the door. As soon as I touched the handle, it fell over, just barely missing me as I sidestepped it.

It wasn't a pretty sight. The cockpit must have been the first point of impact with the side of the mountain, and it showed in how it had twisted and warped itself when it hit. The dashboard was a mess, and the radio didn't work at all. Didn't even turn on. I stabbed desperately at the controls with my burnt fingers, crying freely all the while. I tried to ignore the bodies in the cockpit with me, but it eventually got too much. I ran from the wreckage, only stopping once I was free of the remains of the plane.

Bud and Chad. Gone.

But surely they had called for help, right? People would have heard them, and planes had those little black boxes to tell them our location. I hoped smaller planes had that too. I hoped they would find us. I was getting tired again quickly, and now that it was full dark I couldn't see a thing. As much as I loathed doing so, I crawled back into the cabin and tried to wrench my bag free. It dropped, and I suddenly got very thankful for dad and I's yearly camping trip, while I unrolled my sleeping bag and tried to wriggle in without irritating my arm too much. The plane was still emanating warmth, and it wasn't too cold inside here. I focused on getting to sleep, deciding to find a first aid kit in the morning and tried to pretend the front of the plane didn't exist. No cockpit, no nothing. Only me.

It wasn't too hard to get to sleep after that.

* * *

It was hot when I woke up. The sun had found a slit in the top of the cabins and was piercing through – somehow managing to shine _right _in my eyes. My arm was hurting more now, a deeper, more permanent ache that had me more worried than the searing pain from yesterday. The plane was cool now – the only warmth coming from the sun that was heating the metal outside. I managed to unzip myself with my free hand – I was hot, and sweating. Luckily, it was Summer. Not that that meant much in Canada, but at least I wouldn't freeze to death. I'd only die from starvation, dehydration, wild animals or an infected arm. Easy.

On that note, I set out for the first aid kit. My sweater was completely dry now, and a deep brown in colour. I found the kit near the entrance to the cockpit (which I was still avoiding) and also managed to find a pack of beef jerky stuffed underneath it. I guess I could thank Bud and his incessant desire to snack for that. I emerged into the crisp morning with my kit, and moved into the clearing that had been made by the plane. Trees had been snapped in half like twigs, and there was a huge circle of flattened branches and grass right where the crash site was. That's where I sat, and spread out the kit to see what I could do. While I chewed on a piece of jerky, I inspected my haul. Gauze, bandages, disinfectant, a tiny medical-looking sewing kit, gloves, tweezers, all the usual stuff. It looked like a heavy duty version, there was a thermal blanket and burn cream, snake bite treatment, pain relief and a lot of other stuff that I didn't even know what it did.

I started with my sweater. I really shouldn't have left it so long. It was dried, and I couldn't stop the tears starting when I peeled it off my forearm. Luckily, it wasn't too scary. The flesh of my arm had been pressed together by the cloth, but I was scared of it opening up again. It wasn't bleeding, but it was hot to the touch and very itchy. Digging through the kit with my good hand, I came across some alcohol wipes and wound closers – those little bandages that they strap across a cut to keep it together, rather than using stitches. I'd gone through a fair amount of those in my lifetime. Grimacing, I tried to gently wipe the area with the wipes. The alcohol stung, and the irritation along with the wiping action opened up the cut again. I couldn't stop myself from gasping when I saw it – it was disgusting, and hurt like a bitch. I quickly dabbed around the area and looked away. I was reluctant to use disinfectant on the cut, as it was open and surely that would do more harm than good? I contented myself with dabbing a cotton bud onto an alcohol wipe and kind of poking around in the cut a bit. It stung and I was still crying, but hopefully I wouldn't get blood poisoning or something awful.

I tried my best to stick it together with the straps, and then for good measure packed some gauze on top before securing it with a tightly wrapped bandage. That would do it. I swallowed some painkillers dry and closed up my kit with satisfaction. I was doing well already!

All there was left to do was wait. I searched around the plane a bit more, still avoiding the cockpit at all costs. I found some more jerky, a couple bottles of water and the best thing – an 'emergency' kit underneath one of the seats. That was an amazing find, and in the unlikely case that I didn't get found soon, would probably save my life. It had a flare gun with 3 flares, a pot, a knife, a little miniature plane axe, a lighter, one of those little fire starter things with the flint in it, and some other camping essentials that I vaguely recognised. I was set.

I tried out my phone, which was cracked from the crash but otherwise functional. No signal. I still tried the emergency call function but I didn't hear anything. The battery went down pretty quickly, I think from the damage.

To tell the truth, I was a bit bored by mid-afternoon. I had gotten my backpack out of the plane and into the clearing, and had tried to busy myself with organising all of my supplies. That didn't take too long, and after that there wasn't much else to do. I changed into more lightweight clothes and my hiking boots with thick, sturdy socks and resolved to set out and see if there was anything nearby. I came across a couple rabbits that ran across my path, but there wasn't much else out there. I walked 100 paces in each direction – wary of straying too far from the plane and losing my way – but didn't find anything. No roads, no ranger stations, no water. Nothing. It was sunset by the time that I got back to the plane and still nobody was there. I reluctantly entered the cockpit to try the radio again, and still couldn't get it to work. At this point I was openly sobbing, and scared. I didn't know what to do.

No matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find the body of that kid that had been flying with us. If he was lucky, he'd died. I hoped it was quick. I hoped he hadn't suffered too much.

All I could do was remind myself to stay strong, and that help would be coming. They had to know the plane had gone down by now, they would be looking for me. I ate a quick dinner of jerky and a bottle of water and dragged myself and my things back into the shelter of the plane. It was harder sleeping tonight.

By the third night, I was still alone. They hadn't found me yet, and I wondered what was taking them so long.

* * *

By the sixth night, I was out of food and water.

* * *

When a week had passed, it was time to accept that nobody was coming for me. They didn't know. I wasn't going to be saved.


	3. Chapter 2

It wasn't fun, knowing you were going to die.

Nobody was coming. They hadn't found me, and by this long they probably weren't going to. It had been a week. They'd be here by now, right? I knew they would. I saw Air Crash Investigations, I knew the deal. The little black box would tell people where we are so they could come and search for survivors. But I searched long and hard around the crash site and inside the plane, and as far as I could see there was no little black box – which actually was supposed to be a bright orange thing so it _could _be found.

It wasn't there.

I ran out of food yesterday. And water. I kept trying to look for rivers or something, but I couldn't find anything without losing my way from the plane. And I was still clinging so desperately to the hope of someone finding me. I still hadn't seen the kids' body. He much have been launched pretty far when we hit, or something had dragged him off.

I heard a bear, I think. Something big, lumbering, moving around the trees outside heavily. Hitting stuff around, snuffling and grunting looking for food. Looking for me.

By the end of my seventh day, I had decided to move. The bear kept coming back – I had seen it last night. I looked out my little door into the night and saw a colossal, hulking monster of a bear. Big, black and mean. It saw me too, and rushed me. Luckily it couldn't squeeze its way through the gap, and left at sunrise when it realised I wasn't going to come out. I haven't seen it during the day yet.

I'm really hungry, and my lips are cracked from dehydration. My arm is doing better though; it hasn't gotten infected as far as I can tell. I need to move. I need to find water. But that would mean giving up on the idea of people _finding _me. If I leave, how will they find me? But if I left, maybe I could keep moving until I found somewhere. I was too scared to try out my flares, because the bear was always there at night. Maybe I could hike somewhere high up, set up camp and fire out flares until someone found me. That was my best bet.

So it was with a heavy heart and an aching stomach that I set out the next morning. I packed my meagre supplies into my backpack and tied my sleeping bag on the top. I had foolishly washed my sweater with a bottle of water on my third day, but at least I could make a sort of sling for my arm, so it wasn't just dangling around and hurting me. I strapped up my ankle with some tight bandaging, and was on my way.

I'll tell you, hiking an actual mountain is not easy. One hour in and my feet were killing me, and I was even thirstier. I had yet to find water. I had been heading downhill because I figured that was my best bet at finding water, but as far as I could tell I hadn't gotten_ anywhere_. And I was hungry. I had been on the hunt for some berries or something, but so far hadn't found any. I remembered dad always saying to never, under any circumstances, _ever _eat berries that you aren't _certain_ are safe – but at this point I was about 5 seconds away from amputating my own arm and eating that. I was going to eat the goddamn berries. I was chewing on a piece of bark to curb my hunger when I stumbled across a tiny, thin stream. I would have cried, were it not for the fact that I didn't think I had any water left in me to do so. I collapsed face first into the stream, gulping down huge swallows of water as fast as I possibly could. When I was full of the fresh, creek water I sat up happily. And proceeded to throw it all up over myself.

Rule number one of survival – as recently learnt by Bella: If you haven't had water in two days, don't down two litres in as many minutes. It won't end well. So after slowly sipping at the water for a couple of minutes, and washing the vomit off my clothes as best as I could, I was on my way. I followed the stream uphill, guessing that it had to come from somewhere. Obviously it would go somewhere, and going down would probably grant me a larger source of water – but I really wanted to get up high tonight to set off my first flare.

By midday, I hadn't found a source. If anything, the stream was getting thinner. Until at one point a fair way up the mountain it disappeared altogether. I'm not ashamed to say I cried – again. With my newly hydrated tear ducts. It was just gone. It had thinned out immensely, and then completely vanished into a rock face. Over four hours of hiking and walking for nothing. Before I started to make my way back down, I struggled my way over the rocks that the stream had disappeared into, hoping for a miracle. It was hot, I was upset, and my arm was killing me. I could use a break by now.

Turns out, I got one. Just over the tip of the rock that had taken my beautiful water from me, was what I saw as the Canadian wilderness version of an oasis. A large pond of water, fed by a waterfall. Obviously this was where the stream was leaking from. It was flat ground, with good tree shelter and plenty of areas that I could set up camp in. But then, the Holy Grail of miracles.

_Berries_.

Creeping along the forest floor near the water was a berry bush. And I was pretty sure they were edible. They looked like blueberries, and they were beautiful. I dropped my pack and ran at them as best as I could on my injured foot – think a speedy limp – and went at them. Recalling the incident at the stream, I went slowly. I popped tiny berry by tiny berry into my mouth for well over 40 minutes, interspersing my treats with little handfuls of water from the pond. My mouth and fingers were stained a bright purple, and I was the happiest I had been in a week. Amazing. Berries.

It wasn't long before I was full, and I stretched out in the afternoon sun to rest my legs and belly. This was as good as it got, considering my situation. It wasn't long before I was drifting off in the slight warmth of the afternoon, pillowed by cool grass.

I awoke to a raging, fiery sunset. I was well rested, and finally full. I managed to get up and move over to my pack to see what I could do about shelter. This was the first time I wouldn't have the plane for comfort, and there wasn't much I could really imagine myself building. I wasn't even good with Lego when I was little. Regardless, I tried my best to set up a little area for the night. I unrolled my sleeping bag on a soft patch of grass between two trees and somehow managed to tie off the emergency foil blanket so it draped over half of it. There was a gap, but I was hoping because I faced it toward the cliff face that it wouldn't let too much cold air in. I settled in and arranged my things – my water bottles and my kits. I filled the bottles from the pond and returned to sit on my bag. Unfortunately, I had ignored the fact that I had been drinking water from the _ground_ all day.

I got sick.

It wasn't long before my stomach was aching, and I was rolling around on the grass in agony. I threw up a few times, and it was many, sweaty torturous hours before I was well enough to let go of my stomach and come out of the foetal position that I had adapted. That was stupid. No more gross water. But how would I drink?

Heat killed germs, right? Right! I would boil the water in my little emergency pot and then when it was cool, use it to fill my water bottles. Easy. With that, I set around the rapidly cooling clearing to find some firewood. I snapped little branches off the trees, and grabbed twigs and dried up leaves for kindling – like I had seen dad do so many times every year on our camping trips. I was _so _thankful for those trips now. Once I'd gathered what I construed as enough, I returned to my little set up under the trees. I piled my little twigs up, and then tried to stack the sticks into a tepee-like structure, which is how Dad always did it. Only problem was, it really wasn't working. They kept falling down and knocking over my twig and leaf pile, and it was actually getting pretty cold at this point. Instead, I used my good hand to dig a little hole in the ground, and put my kindling in there. I ripped all the grass away from the sides so it wouldn't catch fire, and started stabbing sticks into the side of the hole, forcing them to stay upright and lean on each other. Once I had a pretty good tepee going, I dug out a matchbox from my emergency kit and dropped a lit match through a gap in the sticks. There was a tiny _whoosh_ and I saw the kindling light up in the middle. I stared that fire down, I'm telling you. I had my eyes on that little bitch. Just daring it to go out before the side-sticks caught fire. Luckily, they did – and it wasn't long before I had a steady little fire going and a little bit of warmth in the cold night.

As it turns out, my makeshift shelter was perfect. Those little foil blankets were made to reflect heat, and they did that very well with the fire. I was toasty warm. I filled up my pot with water and snacked on a few berries while I held it over the fire. It took _ages _to boil. Too long. My arm was aching and my hands were so sore by the time it was finished. Resolving to build myself a pot holder tomorrow, I left the water to cool outside my shelter, and dug through the kit for my flare gun.

I had decided to use my flares sparingly. I was pretty high up, as high as I could go with my cut arm – I would need to climb the rock face to actually get up any higher. I would use two. One tonight, one tomorrow. If nobody had come by then, I would wait until my arm was better to climb higher up and set it off there. During the day time, I would set the biggest fire I could safely have and feed it with leaves and green branches. That made smoke, Dad always said when I brought his the fresh, green wood that it was only good for smoke signals – it wouldn't burn well enough for our campfire.

I stepped over to the edge of the rocks – from here it was a pretty steep drop into the forest. The only traversable bit was where I had managed to drag myself up earlier today, and that was hard enough. Inspecting the flare gun, I deduced that it looked pretty simple. There was a little label on the side that helped, too.

_Aim directly overhead. Load flare in back and pull trigger. Use sparingly._

Easy. I grabbed one of the small red flares, and slotted it into the back of the gun. Bracing myself, I aimed it directly above, making sure I was clear of any trees. With a little scream and closed eyes, I shot the gun.

There was a loud pop, and the flare shot into the air. I didn't see anything for a few seconds, but then it lit – bright red, cutting a line of fire into the sky and lighting up my clearing. It went pretty high up, before dropping back down into the woods not too far from me.

Easy. Signal sent.

I put the gun away, and returned to my shelter. I was finally getting tired – it must have been close to or past midnight at this point, my nap that afternoon had played with my sleeping schedule a little. I collected some cool, wet rocks from around the water and used them to form a little ring around my fire, just in case it got out of control. It was already going down at that point, though. I unlaced my boots and pulled them off to reveal stinking, gross socks. I had been wearing them for a week now. Resolving to wash them tomorrow, I shoved them in the boots and snuggled down into my sleeping bag. My arm wasn't actually hurting, my ankle was healing up, and I had a place to stay. I'd used my first flare, and someone was sure to see it at some point. Things were looking up for me at last.

Actually content, I fell into an easy sleep that night.


End file.
